The detection of sawfly larvae in April with vigilance, then hardly any sawfly in May, I became complacent thinking “no more sawfly this year!” At the beginning of this month when there was a lot of rain, I didn’t check frequently. I knew they were munching on currant leaves and I couldn’t reach a number of them. When the rain had stopped and I was able to put the washing out - I saw the damage was done. Stems stripped of leaves. Popped out today, and the gooseberries are ripening.
The birds have free access to the soft fruit in the garden - I don’t mind, as some of the fruit is unreachable. I prefer birds to eat the fruit than those pesky molluscs that leave slime trails all over the place. A young female blackbird is the main culprit. Although some red currants are ripe, I haven’t picked any yet.
At the plot, more peas were harvested (and mainly eaten there!). Broad beans have been harvestable, though the leaves are now quite badly infected with chocolate spot. Blackfly although present on some of the plants, isn’t widespread. I had sprayed earlier with insecticidal soap, plus there are a load of ladybirds around.
The first calabrese was cut! It survived the slugs/cabbage root fly/cabbage white fly/cabbage white caterpillars to give a relatively decent size head.
Also harvested one turnip! Don’t know why just harvested one, when there are others…
A couple of carrots and a potato plant were pulled.
However, the spring planted garlic didn’t look too healthy.
Somewhere under there, is garlic. I don’t know if this is white rot as it seems to start more at the top of the bulb. Also, we’ve had rather a lot of rain. I don’t think the rust helps matters either. Under the soil and layer of skin - the garlic looks fine.
Not all the bulbs are affected. I tried to guess which ones would be “damaged” but couldn’t tell - some stems were thin but showed no sign of “fur”. Also, the soil was clinging to the affected ones - drainage?
These 2 purplette spring onion things look nice. The rest of the sowing succumbed to slugs/snails or something - perhaps 6ft+ weeder?
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